Rooms sound larger stripped of furniture. Echoes return where laughter used to land. The library was bare except for the built-in shelves and the window seat Betty loved. The turret room was empty, sunlight angling across the floorboards in wedges. In the kitchen, the island gleamed. In my bedroom, pale rectangles marked where paintings had hung.
I moved slowly, touching banisters and doorframes, not in a sentimental frenzy but with a kind of witness. Houses remember. Or maybe we project memory onto them because we need somewhere to set the weight. Either way, I wanted the goodbye to be clean.
In the turret room I stood at the window and looked down at Oak Street. Kids rode scooters in the weak afternoon sun. Mrs. Gable next door watered petunias in yellow clogs. Across the road, the Hernandez twins were helping their father wash the truck. Ordinary life. Normalcy moving forward without consulting my catastrophe. The realization was oddly comforting.
“Thank you,” I whispered into the empty room.
Not to the house exactly. To Betty. To the version of me that had survived long enough to inherit it. To whatever merciful force caused Brett to leave the iPad behind.